The purpose of the present study is to determine if permit-to-purchase laws are significantly related to firearm murder rates. There has been very little research done on the effect of this particular gun control measure on crime. The present study differs from prior research in two ways. First, a large longitudinal data set is used, and data for all 50 states for the period 1980 to 2011 are examined. Second, a fixed effects model, controlling for both state and year effects is used. Results suggest that permit-to-purchase laws have no statistically-significant effect on state-level firearm murder rates. These results are contrary to the results found in prior studies on this topic.